Dear Ben ...

I wasn't sure how to write a documentation on a particular interaction with one student - as I was writing the story, I kept wanting to just write a letter. So, I did.

Dear Ben,

Today was such an exciting day with you. I was delighted by the enthusiasm you bring to your thinking – it never seems to cease to explore unending possibility!

We spent most of our afternoon together on our field trip to the bus stop. On our way out, you asked me how many dimensions we were going to use to sketch our bus stop. Two? Three? Four? “Four dimensions?” I asked. “What would that be like?”

“It would be like measuring translucently,” you said, “like measuring it inside. Like, you could say, measure a solid … kind of like a skeleton with skin on!”

I don’t know what the answer is, but I hope you also found it more important that you asked the question than that we couldn’t come up with a satisfying answer. What have you been thinking about it since today? Did you go home and look it up or ask someone?

At the bus stop, we took measurements of the different panels we are going to paint this summer. Not only did you want to know the length and the height of each panel, you wanted to use this information to figure out the area of each panel and the volume of the whole bus stop! I don’t know if you’ve been learning about these ideas at school, but I could tell you were thinking and connecting something you had already learned to something you were experiencing. Alex, this is one of the most important things about learning! As a teacher, I have learned that all people (not just kids) learn best when there is as much opportunity for thinking as there is for experience. Actually, as a student at the university right now, I’ve been reading a lot about the idea that our thoughts and our experiences are so intertwined, they are almost the same thing! What would you say to that?!

Back at Hilltop, your fervor continued. It was intriguing to learn from you how schools teach multiplication now. When I was in school, we learned it a bit differently. Your boxes looked very complicated to me, but we did end up with the same answers, didn’t we!

Well, not at first, of course. I made a mistake on our first calculation of the area of the base of the bus stop – do you remember? And then, on our next calculation, when we multiplied the area of the base by the height of the bus stop, you made a mistake! This was the perfect illustration of another important belief I have as a teacher – we can learn as much from you kids as you can learn from us!

Thank you, Ben, for reminding me today how much fun learning and thinking is. Do not lose your enthusiasm, and NEVER stop asking your questions.